in The Integrated Media Machine: A Theoretical Framework, Univ. of Lapland, Helsinki, 2000.

by Sergio Cicconi

I would like to focus here
on a special kind of hypertexts: the narrative ones. Moreover, I would
also like to talk about my uneasiness as reader of hypertexts; tell about
the irritation I cannot avoid when I am faced with the task of reading
 or rather of pretending to read  narrative hypertexts, those hypertexts
people call interactive novels or short-stories.

Reading hypertexts, and narrative hypertexts in
particular, is difficult; often there is no pleasure while reading, there
is no understanding of what has been read. Narrative hypertexts are anonymous,
cold, impersonal, chaotic, inconclusive. In short: narrative hypertexts
are ugly.

I cannot avoid sharing, at least in part, these ideas on hypertextual
narrative. Thus, unable to get rid of the feelings of uneasiness and irritation
I feel when facing a narrative hypertext, I would like here to try to
substantiate my reactions. I will, therefore, try to analyze and in part
support the reasons of those and I suspect are many  who, while accepting
with enthusiasm the new technologies, are forced to admit, maybe in a
low voice, the difficult digestion of the texts that have been produced
with those new technologies.